Dear America,
I have to apologize for my irrational and apparently premature exuberance over our president's ostensible bipartisanship. It appears that there is no deal regarding DACA after all as the White House press secretary now says. The President may have appeared to the Democratic leadership to have made commitments, but he now denies that he agreed to anything nor did he make any promises, which we all should have anticipated; just as with his campaign promises, Trump's word is not a bond that anyone can count on. In fact, the absence of trustworthiness is a function of another flaw in our president: he isn't very bright and thus, he makes decisions without thinking. Then, when he realizes that his decision is contrary to a prior pronouncement he has made, he just denies saying one thing or the other based on the bizarre assumption that no one will remember the next time he says, "believe me," which he says all the time. And now, the Republicans are taking another run at the ACA, which presumably Donald Trump will welcome if his party can get out of its own way...definitely not a bipartisan effort, especially in light of his expression of willingness to work with Democrats to amend the ACA. Will he honor his commitment to work with the Democrats and thus redeem his promise to do so or will he support the senate bill to repeal? We'll know next week after the Congressional Budget Office scores Republican senator Lindsey Graham's bill to turn Medicaid into a block grant program run by the states and abrogate the ACA's protections lock, stock and barrel, relegating health care benefits to the unreliable legislative process of each state. What was I thinking when I leapt to the conclusion that Donald Trump might restore functionality to our Congress and bring party comity back into vogue after sixteen years of legislative dysfunction with which the system has been imbued by the Republicans.
To add to all that, Trump is back to name calling, only this time with a foreign megalomaniac who now has nuclear weapons and missiles. It is one thing for a politician to embarrass himself with sophomoric, polemical tactics like assigning insulting nicknames like "crooked," "lyin'" and "little" to his opposition. Enough of our people are impressed by bullying tactics to elect such a man to high office, but the absurdity of it all stays here like a Las Vegas peccadillo. But when he uses the same juvenile tactics on the international scene, labeling a dictator "rocket man" as if he is going to be cowed by a jejune insult the way that domestic politicians seem to have been, he just embarrasses not only himself but his nation, not to mention bringing the world closer to the brink of catastrophe. The irony is that Kim jong-Un probably takes his new sobriquet as a compliment and will be bragging about it to all those North Koreans who already refer to him as their "Dear Leader."
These events are all just more Trumpian contretemps...demonstrations of his incompetence, lack of integrity and underestimation of everyone else fueled by his insatiable, id-driven narcissism, and they are to be expected when you elect an ego with feet to lead your country. The only real question with regard to Donald Trump is how much damage is he ultimately going to do, and can we recover once he is gone. Now, even the Republicans have grounds to call for Trump to be impeached. He is a hazard to all of us regardless of party affiliation, but when was the last time that the Republicans did the right thing.
So the next time that Donald Trump appears to wax rational and self-less remember the last two weeks, not just hurricanes Irma and Maria, but hurricane Donald as well. He's in office now, so there's not much we can do to interdict his misfeasance. But we can root for the Mueller investigation, which I will continue to do now that I have apologized for my folly.
Your friend,
Mike
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